The Post Office scandal should be a wake up call for our relationship with ‘the system’ - Andrew Vine

The appalling injustice of the conviction, jailing and ruin of innocent postmasters which has so outraged the nation since the broadcast of ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office spotlights a corporate culture that we ought to be worried about.

Only when the official inquiry into the Post Office and its Horizon system is complete will we learn exactly when incompetence and a blind faith in IT mutated into victimisation of the innocent.

But what is already clear is that at least in the early stages, Post Office managers believed the Horizon system could not possibly be at fault when it told them there was widespread fraud in the network of branches.

Equally clear is that at no point did anybody at senior level stop to consider how feasible it was that 700-plus postmasters with blameless records had all apparently and simultaneously turned to crime and were stealing thousands of pounds.

We might learn from the inquiry how such an attitude towards trusted colleagues developed, but central to it was surely an unshakeable certainty that the system could not be faulty, which outweighed all sensible human instinct.

Absolute and unquestioning trust in Horizon blotted out reason and rational consideration of what might be going on.

Worse than that, faith in the system skewed the investigation. Vehement denials by postmasters of wrongdoing were disregarded and not looked into properly because of the institutional belief in the infallibility of Horizon.

And when it did become clear that the system was at fault, the cover-up was at least in part carried out to shield not only those responsible but to ensure the shortcomings of the IT were not exposed.

The Post Office is the worst example of such a mindset – and with the most serious consequences – but it is far from the only one.

Bank outages leaving people unable to access their accounts or defaulting on monthly payments, and data breaches in which customers’ personal details fall into the hands of fraudsters have become common in recent years.

And without fail the organisations which let customers and staff down blame their systems. There is no accountability, no senior executive taking responsibility or acknowledging that an IT failure is ultimately the fault of inadequate human oversight.

This was evident a few weeks ago when energy supplier EDF suddenly imposed huge increases in customers’ monthly direct debit payments.

Among those affected were artist Sir Grayson Perry, whose bill shot up from £300 to £39,000, and broadcaster Jon Sopel, both of whom used their public profile – and substantial social media audiences – to highlight what was happening. Their prominence resulted in the problem being sorted out with EDF, entirely predictably, blaming the system. But what if two highly-visible public figures had not led customer protests? What if those affected had no voice, just like the postmasters at first?

Disturbingly, the belief that the computer cannot possibly be wrong or flawed has become entrenched not just in the public and private sectors, but in our justice system.

Since 1999, the criminal and civil courts have operated on a presumption that evidence derived from computers is trustworthy. The doctrine that the machine is always right has become institutionalised and in light of the suffering of the postmasters, that is truly chilling.

And all this happened before the current rise in artificial intelligence, which can only further consolidate the grip IT has on so many aspects of our lives.

Chatbots are already doing everything from arranging our car and home insurance to handling calls about power cuts and bank accounts.

We’re at risk of becoming so completely reliant on IT, and so convinced of its infallibility that we’ll lose sight of the fact it can go catastrophically wrong with shocking consequences.

The Post Office scandal tells us that. Amid the lessons to be learned so that such a cruel injustice can never happen again, it should act as a wake-up call for us to rethink our relationship with ‘the system’ so its voice is never more persuasive than that of the people it is there to serve.